


all little girls want to do magic

by LorienofLoth



Series: they say that clan's all trouble (and maybe they're right) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 10:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8574499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth
Summary: One day in the future the boy she loves is going to call Grace a liar and she is going to say it isn't true, that she might have lied but she isn't a liar. And then she is going to go home and wonder if that wasn't the biggest lie of all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I still have no idea what is going on here.

            The first time Grace Burgess uses magic is not extraordinary, or even particularly unusual, except in that she is doing magic, of course. She summons her teddy from where he had been left in the play-room to her cot, sending him tearing up a flight of stairs and down a corridor. Her parents note the occasion, her mother writing it in her diary in her elegant copperplate, her father proudly telling his co-workers of her achievement.

            Her father tells his co-workers all about her achievements. Michael Fitzpatrick, her father’s partner, knows when she first uses magic, when she gets her first tooth, takes her first steps. Margaret Tierney, the office secretary, is told about her first word— ‘mama’—and the first time she sleeps through the night, and her first day at school. Harry Burgess is generally considered by all of his friends the proudest father to ever live, but when they meet Grace—a funny, sturdy, laughing child—they understand why.

            Grace loves it when her father takes her into work with him. She wanders down the long corridors of the Ministry, her small hand in his, ribbons in her hair and her shoes polished until she can see her reflection in them, and stares at the gleaming walls, at the fountains and statues, stopping to peer around doors. She likes the typing rooms maybe most of all—dozens of busy-seeming women with typewriters, hammering out letters and invoices and orders, and sending them on to other people and departments. It seems frenetic in there, but everyone knows what they’re doing, and they talk and laugh and joke and get things done. Once, when she is seven, Grace goes missing in the Ministry. She is found several hours later, in the typing room, with the staple press, carefully organising a cheerful red-headed lady’s papers and chewing on a bit of liquorice.

            But Grace spends most of her time at home, in the quiet house on Victoria Road. Her mother teaches her to read and write and count, and tells her endless histories of magic, while brewing experimental potions and making careful notes about the results. Grace tries to read them a few times, but they are dense and technical, so she retreats to her own studies; curling up in an armchair by the fire and reading about the founding of Hogwarts, or the role of wizards in Queen Elizabeth’s court, or the role of dragons in muggle history.

            When she goes to tea with other children, the children of her parents’ friends, she looks with longing at their bookcases and sometimes their parents notice and think it’s sweet. Sometimes they talk about how she must be lonely, and she feels a strange guilt, because she would rather be in her warm house, with her mother stirring a potion and telling her about its history, so she can imagine herself a famous potioneer, curing dragonpox, or her father complaining about his day at work and playing endless games of hide and seek, than with these boring children, and she is aware enough to know that she shouldn’t be. The boys and girls in the stories her parents buy her play games together and go for picnics and generally have a spiffing time and it isn’t that she is opposed to the idea, but somehow with real children it isn’t the same. But she doesn’t want her own parents to look at her the way those other parents do, so once or twice a month she goes for tea and eats the Victoria sponge and drinks lemonade with a smile on her face and soon the parents just say what a sweet girl she is, and how pretty, and so even if she spent hours practising the smile in front of a mirror, she thinks it is worth it.

            Grace’s birthdays are always special occasions. Her father takes the day off work—except for her eighth birthday, when there was an attack in the Botanic Gardens—and the house-elf would make her favourite breakfast before they go on a trip. One year they rent a boat, another they wander around a castle, for a third her parents manage to get a licence for a portkey and they go and spend a day in India. But her eleventh birthday is different; the months leading up to it fill her with trepidation and she doesn’t know what to do. Her parents talk fondly of their Hogwarts days, and she knows that they are excited for her. But to her Hogwarts seems like the world’s longest tea party and she doesn’t know how to avoid it.

            The night before her eleventh birthday she doesn’t sleep. She goes down to breakfast with red eyes and gaping yawns, and her parents laugh at her excitement.

            When the owl taps at the window she is almost too tired to react. It’s a funny feeling, anyway, the arrival of something she has been anticipating for so long, but her stomach still twists as she reads the letter carefully. Her mother looks confused at her lack of reaction, and asks if she isn’t excited, so Grace is grateful for the yawn that rips through her. It makes her ‘just tired’ sound that much more honest, especially with the rueful smile she pairs with it. Her father laughs and her mother gives him a look, pointing out that he still pulls all-nighters sometimes even though he isn’t a boy any more, and he points out that that is for work, he can hardly dictate the schedules of criminals, and no-one is looking at Grace any more.

            Her birthday trip that year is to Diagon Alley to buy her school things. Her mother suggests it, and Grace doesn’t know how to say that she wants a real birthday, wants to go to the seaside or the fair or the circus, or would rather stay at home, so she agrees and admires the shop displays and her new school things.

            She does get distracted in the bookshop, flicking through the history books and her mother says it’s a sign she’s destined to be a Ravenclaw like her, at which her father scoffs. Grace wonders if she is meant to crystallise herself down to one trait, wonders if Hogwarts will strip the rest of her away, and laughs and says they’ll soon find out and that it would serve her parents right if she didn’t tell them what house she was in for a whole year. Her father laughs and says she could never keep a secret.

            They stop for an ice-cream before they go home, so they only have a light tea that evening. Her mother produces a present from thin air, in a flourish of sparks and lights, and she is the proud owner of a set of elegant quills and thirteen different coloured inks. Her father gives her a badly wrapped cage for an owl and tells her it’s on the way. She has letters from nine relatives wishing her happy birthday and congratulating her. She writes out thank you letters with her new quills, and tells her parents she’s never been happier.

            Grace Burgess cries herself to sleep that night.


End file.
